


Auditors

by kaelio



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Administrative Responsibilities, Deep Sisko Regret, M/M, infirmary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:00:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29775843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaelio/pseuds/kaelio
Summary: Julian Bashir has overlooked an important matter, and the Captain must ensure it is resolved.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 21
Kudos: 95





	Auditors

Sisko slammed the PADD on Dr. Bashir’s desk. “Sign.”

Julian—easily startled on the best of days, and particularly willing to bring out his best deer-in-the-headlights impression on a fresh-faced Monday—sat up with a jolt. He hadn’t even seen the Captain enter his office in the infirmary, much less with whatever inscrutably understated look he now exhibited in full view.

“C-captain!” He nearly saluted, but then recalled the ridiculousness of the impulse. Still, something about Sisko’s tone had made it feel warranted.

“Auditors are scheduled, and I have enough problems without some bureaucratic reprimand. So.” He tapped the PADD again, to punctuate his point. “Sign.”

Perhaps overly gobsmacked, given his penchant for the occasional oversight, Julian brought the thing up to his face, his eyes re-focusing, adjusting for the glare. “Medbay runs a tight—oh, goodness. But, Captain—!”

“‘All Starfleet personnel must obtain authorization from their C.O. as well as clearance from their Medical Officer before initiating an intimate relationship with an alien species.’” Sisko hadn’t the faintest idea how many times he’d had to recite those words from the Handbook on Personal Relationships, but it was at least several hundred, to Kurzon alone.

(Occasionally flatly, curtly, and once, on a very drunken night, _quite_ sarcastically, as he’d brought his hand down into….)

Bashir’s brows twisted into knots. His stomach joined them. “But I have, every time, except, f-for this, Captain, ah, I think…. Certainly, that is to say, you’ve got, er, quite the wrong impression entirely….”

“Doctor Bashir.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Sign the form.”

“But—Garak, Mr. Garak, and I…? We _haven’t_. Er. I’m not sure where you got the idea….” He was blanching, slightly. His eyes—lovely things they were—were stuck wide, taking in the all-too-familiar document. Sisko had done him the favor of having filled in the names, ranks, species… _activities_. Oh, he’d seen the form before, all right, but never _quite_ like this.

Sisko’s eyes narrowed. “Doctor Bashir. I have observed your conduct, and frankly, I cannot be bothered. If you make an _error_ , with respect to the information you share with unauthorized persons, you will be reprimanded. If, _however_ , you keep things on the modestly _anatomical_ level, I could not care less, beyond—again—that we have dotted our ‘I’s and crossed our ‘T’s and appended whatever other dots, dashes, and strikes are associated with Kardasi characters.”

Julian raised his hands, palms out, defensively. “But Captain, on my bloody nan’s grave, I haven’t!”

“You haven’t.” He leaned in, his hands impressed, heavily, on the surface of the desk. “Not at all? Not with all those _keen_ looks? Those flashes of neck? Not with _all_ the flirtatious arguments in the Replimat, Doctor Bashir?” He wasn’t one to be taken for a fool.

Bashir scooted backwards on the wheels of his chair, though on Deep Space 9, there was never far to retreat. “Oh, no, no-no-no! … Fl- _flirtatious_ …?”

Sisko bore on. “If you’re stumbling, then why don’t you do your good Captain a favor, and sign the form pre-emptively? Seeing as the gentleman doth protest quite a bit, it seems.”

“You have my word as a Starfleet officer!”

Sisko raised a brow.

Julian swallowed. “Oh. Oh, oh, no, no, no. Please, Captain. _Please_ tell me you came to me… first?”

It took a measure of resolve, but Sisko didn’t flinch. “Sent for electronic signature.”

(Bashir, he had wanted to remind _in person._ Anything else seemed in excess, seeing as Starfleet was the only organization who would care about such a form to begin with; he hardly intended to CC: it to the Union.)

 _—_ There was simply not enough time. Not any longer. Electronic transmittal had long since made reneging on correspondence a challenge, if not an insurmountable feat. The deed had been done minutes ago—a lifetime to a guilty electron.

“ _Doctor—!_ ” Garak’s voice from the doorway. That’s what it was. And in his gray hand, yet another PADD held aloft. He looked flustered, almost disheveled—at least by Garak’s standards—a lock or two having come loose from his oft-cemented coif. “Oh, goodness, there you are—!”

Sisko stood to full height, granting Julian the privilege of distance. “A prompt arrival. Cardassians are… known for their administrative efficiency.” He maintained the steely gaze of his dark brown eyes.

Garak rushed over to Bashir, pulling up behind him, dropping the PADD on Julian’s desk, and immediately setting a hand on each shoulder, as he had during their first encounter. The pads of his fingers pressed into the muscles of Julian’s shoulders, asserting their position. “Oh, doctor! What a relief to see you here. I prayed, having received this alarming document, that you would be close at hand.”

Julian froze, the memory echoing in his mind. … And elsewhere.

(Somehow, in his head, it was long ago, if not far away, and he’d felt these very hands—)

The Cardassian dropped his head, running the verge of his jaw, and its ridges, against the crown of Julian’s skull. The doctor, poor doctor, could feel the scrape through his hair. “How sinister, how _brutal_ is the great Federation! All this lofty rhetoric of kindness, of compassion…” His words yawned into exaggerated grief, “and yet, here I am, sitting at my sewing-table, minding my own business, humble shopkeeper that I am—”

Sisko rolled his eyes, thinking: _Oh, here we go…._

“—When I receive a notification containing the most _frightful_ document!” He rubbed his neck, then, against the still-petrified man. “I expected, of course, to be summoned—even with my modest skills, having once been in a citizen of good standing: assigned, of course, a resource to your officers and allies, here and again. And though I was most certainly aghast, utterly _terrified_ , having been marched to Cardassia Prime for the sake of your dear Colonel Kira—at the threat of my very life by further exile, I might add—! Despite that, despite such horrors, I never could have imagined such barbaric _escalation!_ ”

Julian issued a high-pitched squeaking sound. (Probably too high for Cardassian ears, come to think of it.) “G-Garak, I-I-I’ve tried to explain, to tell—ah, excuse me—the Captain, w-we, that we a-aren’t….”

“Blackmailed, yes, blackmailed—again?” Garak’s fingers began to tease, to slide, down through the collar of Julian’s uniform. His claws, though sharp, ghosted over delicate mammalian skin. “Drafted, seized, my body commandeered to service one of their commanding officers? To sexually submit myself to him, lest I be cast out, again, into a hostile universe, unable to protect myself? To meet his every carnal demand, at a whim, else I might _die_?”

“G-Garak, I don’t think that he, I don’t think—"

Sisko took a brief moment to briefly entertain the idea he wasn’t actually there. That would be nice.

Garak swung around, his hands circumnavigating Julian’s neck as he did so—carefully, carefully, so as not to notch the flesh. He took to his knees, settled in on the floor next to Julian’s desk, his eyes pleading, gazing up from between Julian’s splayed thighs. “Doctor? Doctor, dear, you will consent, won’t you? You would not consign me to my demise, having rejected the cruel conditions of your overseer, would you? You cannot be _so_ heartless? After all I have done for you? … I will withhold from you, nothing.”

There was a sheen on Julian’s skin. Small pinpricks of sweat.

A gray hand slid down his front, nearing something that might just be a developing bulge.

“I-I think y-y-you misunderst-stood the tr-tr. Transmittal f-from the Captain, Garak….”

Garak’s eyes glittered. “Then this time, you will not save me?”

“O-oh, I mean…. I didn’t mean,” Julian attempted. His voice cracked. “I mean, if _you’d_ like, that is, if _you’d_ like to—"

“Doctor,” Sisko interrupted coldly, jabbing his finger at the PADD yet again, “sign the god-damned form.” He pointed to his companion, or what amount of him he could see from his particular vantage. “You too, Mr. Garak. Now, good day. I am needed in Ops.”

**Author's Note:**

> a very silly lizard
> 
> The "form for authorizing alien boinking" is from Voyager: "The Disease". Sisko blackmails Garak in DS9 "Second Skin".


End file.
